A Review of a Van I Barely Remember

I moved my parents this summer. This is important for a couple of reasons: One, it's not every day that you help your mom and dad leave the house you grew up in. And two, I borrowed a van from Nissan to do this. Because you're reading these words on a car site, the second point is slightly more relevant than the first; I told Nissan I would review the van, and so here I am, ostensibly writing about a high-roof 2016 Nissan NV3500 HD.

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The problem is, I didn't think much about that van. Not on purpose; it just happened. I drove from Kentucky to Seattle with my mind on the white line and a thousand things, sometimes barely able to keep focus on simple topics, like the speed limit or the timing of our next gas stop. And so I sit here, wondering what I'm supposed to say in a review of a product I can barely remember using. (And for some reason, I'm reminded of Love Story, although nobody died: "What can you say about a van that moved us across the country? That it loved high-test, and I-90, and me?")

The whole trip was a watermark experience, the kind that comes along once or twice in a life, and watermark moments tend to be overwhelming. You don't spend a lot of time thinking about the tools you've collected to do a job, because that would mean you're not focusing on the job. You just use those tools, trying to get through the moment without leaning against a wall for too long while your throat closes up.

Sam Smith

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The van showed up in Mom and Dad's driveway. We loaded it, we drove across the country. Two hundred and forty inches of steel and a 317-horse V8, plus a high roof and tall rear loading doors. The latter came in handy when we had to stuff in a mattress. The Nissan cost just over $30,000, which seems like a decent deal in the world of large vans. I can tell you that the roof was tall, that the NV had 323 cubic feet of storage, that it was particularly composed while towing a trailer at 80 mph, in a crosswind, across Montana. I didn't take any notes on handling or what the transmission felt like, because I was too busy staring out the window and thinking.

I hope the Nissan people will forgive me for this. Test vehicles are supposed to be tested; after that, you write about them. I can't remember the last time I was so overwhelmed by a moment that I was unable to do my job.

Twenty-five years ago, my parents moved into a mid-size ranch house in Louisville, Kentucky. I lived there from eighth grade until the summer after high school, then left and never came back. My leaving had little to do with Louisville or my parents and everything to do with the reason kids leave anywhere: You just have to go.

Same thing, really, this summer: Mom and Dad left Kentucky for the west coast. Where my wife and I live. We landed here a year ago, after ten years of bouncing around the country, a new apartment or city every year for a decade. The stability was welcome but also unsettling, for reasons I couldn't put a finger on, and still can't. But we did it for the girls: We have two small daughters, both toddlers. I know they were half the reason Mom and Dad moved out of Kentucky. I'm not arrogant enough to think I know the other half, but I will tell you that 2300 miles of divided highway pushes you deep into your own head.

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Two thousand three hundred miles. A lot of staring at the broken white line in the center of the road. Every few hours, another fill of the tank. Tick tick clunk, goes the pump, and then you're back on the road.

Sam Smith

Funny how stress works: You think you're going to be able to hold it together. You always do. And then you can't, or you won't, or some small part of you doesn't want to. A part that you hate to admit exists, but that rears its ugly head when you least seem to need it. So you just climb back in the van and keep staring down the road. It reminded me of leaving home the first time: Ignore the rush of memories and don't stop.

The van did what good vans do, which is get out of the way and just be easy to load and whistle down the highway. It moved around a little in crosswinds, but then, a high-roof NV is something like 105 inches tall. If you can build a hundred-inch-tall steel box that hauls several rooms' worth of stuff and it doesn't sway in a stiff breeze, good for you, you've solved the laws of physics.

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I suppose the good bits make the NV a good van. Do I remember? Hell, we drove through eight states, and the day after we arrived in Washington, I could only remember what two of them looked like. What I did remember is walking through the house one last time, not wanting to look around. The two-car garage I helped my dad sweep out, empty for the first time in 25 years. The kitchen, where my mom's big wooden farm table always sat.

Machines are somehow always there during moves or upheavals. You're in a car, driving away from the last moments of a bad breakup; you're loading a van to go to college, or to move a girlfriend, or to help your parents move to the place where they're basically going to retire, even if no one wants to say the word retirement, because that would mean they're getting old. Like the greeting cards say, old is just a number, until it isn't. Until life-changing moments come rushing up to suck you in and you find yourself in the jetwash, sitting behind a dashboard, trying to process what just happened. Trying to process what you took for granted. The crutches we use to keep moving from day to day.

Sam Smith

Mom and Dad have been in town a month. They live a mile from our house, just up a hill and through a couple of traffic lights. We didn't plan that, it's just where they found a good apartment. Having them here has changed how we live and go about our day. Not always in ways I could have predicted, not always tangible.

When you work for a car magazine, you spend a lot of time thinking about what machines mean. Less time viewing them as tools. Which, of course, they are. Physical objects, built for a job.

If you go by volume, a Nissan cargo van is mostly air. You can't touch or hold that empty space, but it's a kind of possibility. Open-ended, like a cross-country move. Funny how that works.